ArchiTourAlgarve - Pires & Brito Architecture Walking Tour - Faro Preview

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Apartments - Rua Conselheiro Sebastião Teles 27

Apartments - Rua Conselheiro Sebastião Teles 27 - 1993And suddenly...Manuel Gomes da Costa makes use of triangular shapes, a whole new visual language...Apartment block of 4 floors with business premises on the ground floor. Strong vertical sections (in the plane of the facade and transverse to it) that intersect and connect the balconies. Accents on the balustrades and on the facade with surprising triangular flower boxes.

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Building - Rua Aboim Ascensão 13a

Building - Rua Aboim Ascensão 13a - 1969An early Manuel Gomes da Costa building: A narrow apartment block with 4 floors and a business premise/church on the ground floor. The balconies form a kind of white fine-meshed asymmetrical wall finished with a subtle minimalist composition of alternating horizontal concrete bands and vertical aluminum bars in different thicknesses.

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Apartments - Avenida Calouste Gulbenkian

Apartments - Avenida Calouste Gulbenkian - 2002Urban apartment block in eight floors with commercial spaces/shops on the ground floor beside one of Faro's major access roads. Fine-meshed interplay of balcony elements with cutouts and glass infills. Aluminum box profiles and balcony walls perpendicular to the facade with shadow beams as a subtle finish.Composition of closed and open facade surfaces in various materials and topped with wide roof moldings. The connecting bridge with the other side of the ring road gives the building even a more urban dynamic, as if it were a castle accessible via a footbridge. Rais in case of danger....Go and have a look from the pedestrian bridge to see everything in full glory and try to find the Pires & Brito logo in the pavement.

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Building - Rua Manuel Ascensão 42

Building - Rua Manuel Ascensão 42 - 1995Spacious L-shaped apartment block of five floors with business premises and garages on the ground floor. On one side with staggered balconies where the concrete beams pass each other at the end and could make you think lightly of the furniture designs of Dutch "Stijl" architect Rietveld.A dynamic and subtle play of horizontal concrete surfaces & beams, glass panels, flower boxes and shade grilles. On the other side a slightly 'just not' symmetrical facade with balconies that - again in a completely different way - jump back to the sides.

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Buildings Rua Frederico Lecor 51-53

Buildings Rua Frederico Lecor 51-53 - 2001Apartment blocks consisting of five floors with commercial spaces and garages on the ground floor. The left block has an A-Symmetrical facade with an alternation of horizontal and vertical concrete beams in a subtle play between the balustrade elements and the shadow beams.In between a wide vertical facade part with an infill of fine-meshaluminum box profiles and strips.The right block is less exuberant and more subdued, but speaks the same architectural language. Unfortunately, closing the balconies detracts from the spatial dynamics of the facade.

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Apartment Praceta Bernardo Ramos 18-24

Apartment Praceta Bernardo Ramos 18-24 - 1980Apartment block consisting of seven floors with business premises - Santa Casa de Misericórdia - in the recessed plinth beautiful blue/white horizontal tile strips on the ground floor, which harmonizes with the blue undersides of the balconies and the blue surfaces above the windows.Balconies with subtle recesses and surface compositions with loosely cut balustrades and other open surfaces in the facade. Flower boxes and balcony finishes in continuous height, alternating with aluminum bar fences. Unfortunately, many balconies have been closed, which means that much of the spatial quality is lost.Don't forget to walk around the building and see the other side.

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Urbanização do Montinho

Urbanização do Montinho - 1985Apartment block consisting of fourteen floors with business spaces on the ground floor and set-backs on the last three floors. The building can be regarded as 'Light Brutalist'. Partly due to the sloping continuous concrete balcony balustrades that give this 'tall' building a heavy horizontal dominance.This dominance is surprisingly broken on one side of the building by a ladder-shaped vertical concrete structure that gives it a certain playfulness. A striking building with actually 'four' facades with balconies, but you have to walk around it to perceive it.The building was awarded with the Architecture Prize of the city of Faro in 1991.

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Apartments Rua frei lourenço Santa Maria

Apartments Rua frei lourenço Santa Maria - 1973This twelve-story apartment block with business premises/shops is not only a striking corner building of one of Faro's main roads, but is also a 'landmark' of the 'Largo da Carmo' square. Probably one of the most beautiful buildings from the Pires & Brito series of buildings by architect Manuel Gomes da Costa.The kaleidoscopic effect of the building, especially as you approach it, is surprising and of unprecedented beauty. The simple offset of the balconies and the spatial play of the subtly incised side surfaces, the shadow beams and the railings create an special spatial dynamic in the two main facades of the building. The 'bare' side wall on the right only makes the effect stronger.

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Apartments Rua João de Deus 28

Apartments Rua João de Deus 28 - 1996This four-storey apartment block with business premises/shops has a cubist appearance due to the box-shaped balconies with fine incisions and finishes with subtle horizontal metal profiles.The vertically striped shadow grids and the horizontally continuous shadow bars complete the whole and make it a composition.

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Edificio Àgora & Praça de Ossonobo - Lago de Francisco sá Carneiro 47

Edificio Àgora & Praça de Ossonobo - Lago de Francisco sá Carneiro 47 - 1996This seven-storey building complex with business premises and shops is located in the corner of Faro's market hall. You can walk under it and trough a beautiful courtyard to the other side of the building. In addition to the modest composition in the facade with horizontals and verticals that weave a second skin around the balconies.In alternating composites of intersecting planes and beams and with occasionally just a vertical strip of windows straight through it. Besides beauty, this building also has humor. Especially because of the two life-size donkeys - the logo of the Pires & Brito company & a work of the artist Herminio Pinto da Silva - that look down from the roof at the audience below them.On the other site of the building, we are even more surprised with a straight 'mikado-like' play of horizontal, vertical and transverse shadow elements in the facade and with suddenly a mezzanine on the ground floor. Walk through it and be surprised...

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Apartments 'The White Elephant' - Avenida 5 de Outubro

Apartments 'The White Elephant' - 1987Perhaps at first glance the 'White Elephant' looks like a 'Brutalist' building complex, consisting of 12 floors at the front with the Milenium Bank on the ground floor and a setback on the top floor.It is a gigantic building block where the continuous shell-shaped white concrete balconies, with glass and planters mainly determine the dominant image. The continuous balconies are sharply intersected with building-high deepblue & white staggered tile panels.Exept by tile pannels, the balconies are intersected by an aluminum deep blue shade grille in fine vertical profiles. On the ground floor there is a repeating column structure with arches in between that forms a covered arcade together with the recessed glass facade.The facade around the corner of the main building has a high tile tableau, but now with horizontal recesses. Further around the corner the building continues with apartments and offices in blocks of varying heights and on the ground floor commercial spaces/shops with arcade.The alternation between building heights, balcony shapes, intersections with tile scenes and the urban accent in the height of the building, at the end of Rua da Alameda, is surprising. Walk all the way around it and be surprised by this colossal building block, which was not only one of the last projects of Manuel Gomes da Costa but but also one of his most favorite.

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A cup of coffe for your Touguide

Offer yourTourguide a cup of coffee through this donation link: For information about a personal Tour: architouralgarve@gmail.com